Things Beyond Midnight

by William F. Nolan

  “Where are we?” he asked. “I mean—what part of the Funhouse?”

  “About midway through from where you start,’” I said. “But the fun part is ahead. You haven’t missed anything.”

  “This is crazy,” he repeated again, half to himself. Then: “Ouch!”

  I stopped, flashed the dimming light back at him. He was down on one knee.

  “Hurt yourself?”

  “I’m okay, just stumbled. A loose board.”

  “Lots of those in here,” I admitted. “Not dangerous, though. Not the way I’m taking you.”

  As we moved down the narrow wooden tunnel there was a wet, sliding sound.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “The lake,” I told him. “This part of the tunnel is built over the shore. That’s the sound the lake water makes, hitting the pilings. The wind’s up. Storm’s coining.”

  We kept walking—going down one tunnel, turning, entering another, twisting, turning, reversing in the wooden maze. Maze to him, not to me. It was my world.

  The rain had started, pattering on the wooden roof—dripping down into the tunnels. And the end-of-summerheat had given way to a sudden chill.

  “This is no fun,” said the stranger. “It’s not what I remembered. I don’t like it.”

  “The fun’s up ahead,” I promised him.

  “You keep saying that. Look, I think we’d better—”

  Suddenly my flash went out.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “What happened?”

  “Battery finally died,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ve got another in the pickup. Wait here and I’ll get it.”

  “Not on your life,” the stranger protested. “I’m not staying alone herein the pitch dark in this damned place.”

  “You afraid of the dark?” I asked him.

  “No, dammit!”

  “Then wait for me. I can’t lead you back without a flash. Not through all the twists and turns. But I know the way. I can move fast. Won’t be ten minutes.”

  “Well... I—”

  “One thing, though. I want to warn you carefully about one thing. Don’t try to move. Just stay right where you are, so I’ll know where to find you. Some of the side tunnels are dangerous. Rotting boards. You could break a leg. The tunnels are tricky You have to know which ones to stay out of.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll stick right here like a bug on a wall.”

  “Ten minutes,” I said.

  And I left him there in the tunnel.

  Of course I didn’t go back to the pickup for any batteries. Instead, I went to the control room at the end of B Tunnel.

  The door was padlocked, but I had the key. Inside, feeling excited about the stranger, I let Ed know I was here. Which was easy. I’d rigged a low-voltage generator in the control room, and when I pulled down a wall switch a red light went on under the tunnels and Ed knew I was back with a stranger.

  I’ll bet he was excited, too. Hard to tell with Ed. But I sure was. My heart was pounding.

  Fun in the Funhouse!

  I didn’t waste any time here. I’d done this many times before, so it was routine now: unlock the door, go inside, throw the switch for Ed, then activate the trap.

  Trapdoor.

  Right under the bearded stranger’s feet. Even if he moved up or down the tunnel for a few yards (some of the nervous ones did that) there was no problem because the whole section of flooring was geared to open and send whoever was inside the tunnel down onto the slide. And the slide ended on the sand at the lakefront.

  Where Ed was.

  He would come up out of the lake when he saw the light. It would shine on the black water and he would see it from where he lived down there in the deep end and he would come slithering up.

  Ed wasn’t much to look at. Kind of weird, really. His father was one of those really big rats that live in the burrows under the cemetery, and his mother was something from deep in the lake. Something big and ugly and leathery They’d made love—the rat and the lake thing—and Ed was the result. Their son. He doesn’t really have a name, but I call him Ed the way Gramps called me Tad. It fits him somehow, makes him more appealing. More... human.

  Ed and me, we get along fine as partners. I bring him things to eat, and he saves the “goodies” for me. Like wallets, and cash and rings (that big one Sally was joshing me about came from one of Ed’s meals) and whatever else the strangers have that I can use.

  Ed is smart.

  He seems to know that I need these things to keep going now that the factory’s shut down and I’ve lost my job here and all. That’s why the partnership works so well. We each get our share. After I take what I want (one time I got a fine pair of leather boots) he drags the body back into the lake.

  Then he eats.

  Lucky for me, one meal lasts Ed for almost a month. So I don’t have to worry if no stranger shows up at Sally’s for two, three, even four weeks. One always ambles along sooner or later. Like Mama always said, Everything comes to those that wait. Mama was a very patient woman. But she could be nasty. I can testify to that.

  It gets bad in winter—for strangers, I mean—when the roads are closed, but that’s when Ed sleeps anyhow, so things even out.

  By the time I got back to the stranger’s tunnel that afternoon it was really coming down. Rain, I mean. Dripping and sliding along the cold wood, and getting under my collar. Most uncomfortable, Somehow, rain always depresses me. Guess I’m too moody.

  The stranger was down there with Ed where I expected him to be. Sometimes there’s a little yelling and screaming, but nobody ever hears it, so that’s no problem either. One fellow tried to use a knife on Ed, but Ed’s skin is very tough and rubbery and doesn’t cut easy. The stranger was just wasting his time, trying to use a knife on Ed.

  I took a ladder down to the sand where the body was.

  Ed was off by the water’s edge, kind of breathing hard, when I got there. His jaw was dripping and his slanted black eyes glittered. Ed never blinked. He was watching me the way he always does, with his tail kind of moving, snakelike. He looked kind of twitchy, so I hurried. I don’t think Ed likes the rain. Ed makes me nervous when it rains. He’s not like himself. I never hang around the Funhouse when he’s like that.

  The bearded stranger was already dead, of course. Most of his head was gone, but Ed had been careful not to muss up his clothes—so it was no problem getting his wallet, rings, cash, coins...

  When I climbed the ladder again Ed was already sliding toward the body.

  Guess he was hungry.

  Three and a half weeks later the stranger at the counter in Sally’s was looking at my watch.

  “I’ve never seen one like that,” he said.

  “Tells you the time in ten parts of the world,” I said. “Tells you the month of the year and the day of the week. And it rings every hour on the hour.”

  The stranger was impressed.

  After a while, I grinned, leaned toward him across the counter and said, “You ever go to amusement parks as a kid?”

  00:11

  DEAD CALL

  Swapping compliments with authors whose work you admire and who admire your work is one of the many pleasant ego-boosting aspects of attending a World Fantasy Convention. And let’s face it, all of us in the writing game need our egos boosted from time to time.

  In 1979, at Providence, Rhode Island, it was a swap between me and Stephen King. This was the first time we’d met, and I told him that The Shining was one of my favorite horror novels—and he told me that “Dead Call” was one of his favorite short stories.

  I wrote this one for Kirby McCauley’s anthology, Frights, in 1974. I’d always wondered how I’d react if the phone rang and I found that a dead man was on the line.

  Just what do you say to a corpse?

  DEAD CALL

  Len had been dead for a month when the phone rang.

  Midnight. Cold in the house and me dragged up from sleep to answer the call. Helen gone for the weekend. Me,
alone in the house. And the phone ringing.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, Frank.”

  “Who is this?”

  “You know me. Its Len... ole Len Stiles.”

  Cold. Deep and intense. The receiver dead-cold matter in my hand. “Len Stiles died four weeks ago.”

  “Four weeks, three days, two hours and twenty-seven minutes ago—to be exact.”

  “I want to know who you are?”

  A chuckle. The same dry chuckle I’d heard so many times.

  “C’mon, ole buddy—after twenty years. Hell, you know me.”

  “This is a damned poor joke!”

  “No joke, Frank. You’re there, alive. And I’m here, dead. And you know something, ole buddy... I’m really glad I did it.”

  “Did... what?”

  “Killed myself. Because... death is just what I hoped it would be. Beautiful... gray... quiet... no pressures.”

  “Len Stiles’ death was an accident... a concrete freeway barrier... His car—”

  “I aimed my car for that barrier,” the phone-voice told me. “Pedal to the floor. Doing over ninety when I hit... No accident, Frank.” The voice cold... cold. “I wanted to be dead. And no regrets.”

  I tried to laugh, make light of this—matching his chuckle with my own. “Dead men don’t use telephones.”

  “I’m not really using the phone, not in a physical sense. It’s just that I chose to contact you this way. You might say it’s a matter of ‘psychic electricity’. As a detached spirit I’m able to align my cosmic vibrations to match the vibrations of this power line. Simple, really.”

  “Sure. A snap. Nothing to it.”

  “Naturally, you’re skeptical. I expected you to be. But... listen carefully to me, Frank.”

  And I listened—with the phone gripped in my hand in that cold night house—as the voice told me things that only Len could know... intimate details of shared experiences extending back through two decades. And when he’d finished I was certain of one thing:

  He was Len Stiles.

  “But, how... I still don’t...”

  “Think of this phone as a ‘medium’—a line of force through which I can bridge the gap between us.” The dry chuckle again. “Hell, you gotta admit it beats holding hands around a table in the dark—yet the principle is the same.”

  I’d been standing by my desk, transfixed by the voice. Now I moved behind the desk, sat down, trying to absorb this dark miracle. My muscles were wire-taut, my fingers cramped about the black receiver. I dragged in a slow breath, the night dampness of the room pressing at me.

  “All right... I don’t... believe in ghosts, don’t... pretend to understand any of this, but... I’ll accept it. I must accept it.”

  “I’m glad, Frank—because it’s important that we talk.” A long moment of hesitation. Then the voice, lower now, softer. “I know how lousy things have been, ole buddy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just know how things are going for you. And... I want to help. As your friend, I want you to know that I understand.”

  “Well... I’m really not...”

  “You’ve been feeling bad, haven’t you? Kind of down’, right?”

  “Yeah... a little, I guess.”

  “And I don’t blame you. You’ve got reasons. Lots of reasons. For one... there’s your money problem.”

  “I’m expecting a raise. Shendorf promised me one—within the next few weeks.”

  “You won’t get it, Frank. I know. He’s lying to you. Right now, at this moment, he’s looking for a man to replace you at the company. Shendorfs planning to fire you.”

  “He never liked me... We never got along from the day I walked into that office.”

  “And your wife... all the arguments you’ve been having with her lately... It’s a pattern, Frank. Your marriage is all over Helen’s going to ask you for a divorce. She’s in love with another man.”

  “Who, dammit? What’s his name?”

  “You don’t know him. Wouldn’t change things if you did. There’s nothing you can do about it now. Helen just... doesn’t love you any more. These things happen to people.”

  “We’ve been... drifting apart for the last year—but I didn’t know why. I had no idea that she...”

  “And then there’s Janice. She’s back on it, Frank. Only it’s worse now. A lot worse.”

  I knew what he meant—and the cold ness raked along my body. Jan was nineteen, my oldest daughter—and she’d been into drugs for the past three years. But she’d promised to quit.

  “What do you know about Janice? Tell me!”

  “She’s into the heavy stuff, Frank. She’s hooked bad. It’s too Lite for her.”

  “What the hell are you saying?”

  “I’m saying she’s lost to you... She’s rejected you, and there’s no reaching her. She hates you... blames you for everything.”

  “I won’t accept that kind of blame! I did my best for her.”

  “It wasn’t enough, Frank. We both know that. You’ll never see her again.”

  The blackness was welling within me, a choking wave through my body.

  “Listen to me, old buddy. Things are going to get worse, not better. I know. I went through my own kind of hell when I was alive.”

  “I’ll... start over... leave the city—go East, work with my brother in New York.”

  “Your brother doesn’t want you in his life. You’d be an intruder... an alien. He never writes you, does he?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean—”

  “Not even a card last Christmas. No letters or calls. He doesn’t want you with him, Frank, believe me.”

  And then he began to tell me other things... He began to talk about middle age and how it was too late now to make any kind of new beginning... He spoke of disease... loneliness... of rejection and despair. And the blackness was complete.

  “There’s only one real solution to things, Frank—just one. That gun you keep in your desk upstairs. Use it, Frank. Use the gun.”

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  “But why not? What other choice have you got? The solution is there. Go upstairs and use the gun. I’ll be waiting for you afterwards. You won’t be alone. It’ll be like the old days... we’ll be together... Death is beautiful, Frank. I know. Life is ugly, but death is beautiful... Use the gun, Frank... the gun... use the gun... the gun... the gun...”

  I’ve been dead for a month now, and Len was right. It’s fine here. No pressures. No worries. Gray and quiet and beautiful.

  I know how lousy things have been for you. And they’re not going to improve.

  Isn’t that your phone ringing?

  Better answer it.

  It’s important that we talk.

  00:12

  THE UNDERDWELLER

  This is, by far, my most frequently reprinted story. It has been available to readers, in one form or another, for over forty years under its present title or as “The Small World of Lewis Stillman.” Isaac Asimov has called it a “classic about the struggle to survive.”

  The story was first printed in the August 1957 issue of the digest-size magazine, Fantastic Universe. Since then, it has been reprinted in Europe, selected for ten anthologies (including Modern Masters of Horror), and for a school magazine (Read), has appeared in three of my collections, has been broadcast on radio, sold to television, and adapted for a comic book. (My teleplay version, in script format, was printed in the book of the 1980 World Fantasy Convention, A Fantasy Reader.)

  Originally it was my intention to write a novel about a man who lived under, not in, Los Angeles. The novel never materialized. Instead, I wrote “The Underdweller.” The city storm drains, as I have described them here, are quite real and exist today beneath the concrete skin of Los Angeles (although I’ve never tried living in one). Pickwick’s Bookshop, in Hollywood, was also just as I have described it, but is, alas, no longer in business.

  Here’s my under-city story of a man who loves
books, and about the personal price he pays to obtain them.

  THE UNDERDWELLER

  In the waiting, windless dark, Lewis Stillman pressed into the building-front shadows along Wilshire Boulevard. Breathing softly, the automatic poised and ready in his hand, he advanced with animal stealth towards Western Avenue, gliding over the night-cool concrete past ravaged clothing shops, drug and department stores, their windows shattered, their doors ajar and swinging. The city of Los Angeles, painted in cold moonlight, was an immense graveyard; the tall, white tombstone buildings thrust up from the silent pavement, shadow-carved and lonely. Overturned metal corpses of trucks, buses, and automobiles littered the streets.

  He paused under the wide marquee of the Fox Wiltern. Above his head, rows of splintered display bulbs gaped—sharp glass teeth in wooden jaws. Lewis Stillman felt as though they might drop at any moment to pierce his body.

  Four more blocks to cover. His destination: a small corner delicatessen four blocks south of Wilshire, on Western. Tonight he intended bypassing the larger stores like Safeway and Thriftimart, with their available supplies of exotic foods; a smaller grocery was far more likely to have what he needed. He was finding it more and more difficult to locate basic foodstuffs. In the big supermarkets, only the more exotic and highly spiced canned and bottled goods remained—and he was sick of bottled oysters!

  Crossing Western, he had almost reached the far curb when he saw some of them. He dropped immediately to his knees behind the rusting bulk of an Oldsmobile. The rear door on his side was open, and he cautiously eased himself into the back seat of the deserted car. Releasing the safety catch on the automatic, he peered through the cracked window at six: or seven of them, as they moved towards him along the street. God! Had he been seen? He couldn’t be sure. Perhaps they were aware of his position! He should have remained on the open street, where he’d have a running chance. Perhaps, if his aim were true, he could kill most of them; but, even with its silencer, the gun might be heard and more of them would come. He dared not fire until he was certain they had discovered him.